New Dimensions

We are settling into something of a routine these days. I'm back at work, Stephanie is full-time solo at home, and Hannah's gaining weight and finding the world slightly less... astonishing...

(I have to pause here, because that's not quite the right word. Vocabulary fails to offer a word sufficiently substantive. After a good meal she's bolt awake, and once wrapped and turned to face the vast plains of the living room there is in her eyes a look that transcends wonderment, a stunned but hopeful bogglement at the sheer scope of what she's gotten herself into, an unbelieving flabbergast, an incredulous marvel. But, more. It's a hyperbolic awe, the likes one might imagine from an explorer who climbs the tallest hill only to see from the summit the vast plains and forest spread out to infinity; what that first amphibi-fish thought after mucking its way onto the beach, "What IS this place?!" Like poor Square from Flatland, pulled by the Sphere into the third dimension:

An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness; then a dizzy, sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line that was no Line; Space that was not Space; I was myself and not myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, 'Either this is madness or it is Hell.' 'It is neither,' calmly replied the voice of the Sphere, 'it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions; open your eye once again and try to look steadily.' I looked, and, behold, a new world!

If English holds a word for that experience -- epiphany? eureka? -- that word describes how she looks at the world.

But, back to our main story.)

We are greatly looking forward to harnessing that awe and filling it with experience and learning -- and more questions. She's beginning, we think, to see patterns. She clearly recognizes Stephanie and the proximity of mealtime. When carried, fussily to her crib (or the sink) for changing, she relaxes once laid down and waits patiently, watching the spigot gush or the current colorful crib animal. Current favorite is a beanie baby blue jay. We are finding patterns, too: certain crying patterns seem to indicate hunger, an approach to wakefulness, or desire for a clean diaper. Stephanie's finding that meals are less wrangle, trial, and error, and more fun.

And speaking of new dimensions, she's changing size all over. Not only do here premie diapers no longer fit, but her newborn onesies and -- egad! -- many of her hats no longer stretch around her little head, including that pink one we mentioned several posts down. Her extra chins and folds have filled out and we swear in a few days she'll grow so large her head will push through the ceiling like a '50s radioactive monster-movie baby (or like Clifford the Big Red Dog for those who may not appreciate my off-brand humor).

All in all, there are several whole new dimensions to Hannah.